Facebook

I recently found two very interesting articles outlining two aspects of the social network Linkedin that most of the users don’t really think of. Where does your profile belong to, and… where do your contacts belong to?

Since Facebook appeared, people have started sharing information about themselves with others without really thinking the consistencies and especially their personal privacy. Linkedin was founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003,it is mainly used for professional networking. Because of its focus on professional networking it finally became one of the most powerful social media channels for corporate and local marketers as well. That it the reason that companies are encouraging employee use of the product as part of corporate marketing efforts. This helps both the corporate marketing and the employee’s career goals. Here comes the big brother! Companies have started monitoring the social media profiles of their employees, also announcing that they have a say in how their employees will handle their personal profiles. If you want to read more you may read the whole article of Deb McAlister here.

A related issue is if your contacts belong to you, or to the company that you work for. Many of your contacts after all might have become your contacts through e.g. business trips while working for your company. According to the article of June 2008 of The Telegraph a court in England has issued an order that requires an employee who resigned to start his own consulting business to turn over all of his LinkedIn contacts to his former employer – along with receipts and contracts proving that none of them became clients of his new firm. If you want to read more you may read the whole article of Deb McAlister here.

Today I was reading this article on the London School of Economics website titled “Parents are not welcome as Facebook friends, finds LSE study”.

There is always a doubt in my mind whenever I read articles related with technology… can we really distinguish what new the technology brings in our lives? It seems that we only usually realize what our society is, what the human nature is and how we behave, not the “change” that the technology brings.

As stated in the article, children don’t want to have their parents as friends on Facebook. I remember myself not wanting to be with my parents all the time, I also remember that I never wanted my parents to know everything about me and my personal life (I don’t think I am different than any other regular person out there). Soooo, there is no difference on the Facebook case. Everyone who think that this is something new, either you forgot how you behaved as children, or you do think that technology has changed the human nature (and I can’t help you recovering out of that 🙂 ).

It is interesting that technology can help us understand our nature by not even using it for that purpose…

As a conclusion, technology is an enabler, a tool to make our lives easier. We are doomed to fail if we think something more than that…